The Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has stated that members must consider “deep and thorough” reform
at the 14th Ministerial Conference (MC14) in March next year if the WTO is to remain relevant.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala stated this at the meeting of the General Council on Wednesday.
Reporting to the meeting in her capacity as Chair of the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), the Director-General said that in recent meetings she had with leaders and ministers in Japan and the Republic of Korea, the issue of WTO reform “was front and centre” of the discussions.
“Prime Minister Ishiba (of Japan) and his ministers of trade, foreign affairs and finance, along with virtually every APEC minister that I met in Jeju, have bought into the idea that we must not waste a crisis, and that we need deep and thorough reform of the WTO if it is to remain relevant,” DG Okonjo-Iweala said.
“For a successful MC14, we must act here in Geneva to deliver a package of reform proposals for ministers to consider and bless at MC14,” she added. “Nothing short of this can reposition this organization in the way and form needed.”
The Director-General met with Prime Minister Ishiba and other senior Japanese government officials in Tokyo on 13 May and then attended a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Jeju, Republic of Korea, on 15-16 May.
At their 12th Ministerial Conference in 2022, WTO members for the first time agreed to undertake a comprehensive review of the WTO’s functions in order to ensure the organization is capable of responding more effectively to both the challenges facing the multilateral trading system and the opportunities provided by contemporary developments in global trade.
The Director-General said that while the ministers she met “made clear they value the system, they also admitted it cannot continue the way it is.”
“Members keep sweeping things under the carpet and not solving problems,” she said. “I think what has brought us here is the inability to solve problems when they occur, and this has led to unilateral actions, instead of a cooperative approach to solve these problems.”
“It has taken time for members to admit that things are not working as well as they should, and that they want solutions,” she continued.
The Director-General said she was pleased work is continuing on possible deliverables for MC14, including further work on fisheries subsidies, agriculture, the Investment Facilitation for Development initiative, electronic commerce, and issues pertaining to least developed countries (LDCs).
Members will have a chance to assess progress on these issues at the next TNC meeting in July and decide later which packages are ready to take forward to MC14 for decision.
She welcomed the recent progress made on member acceptances of the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, noting that 99 members have now accepted the Agreement with only 12 more needed to bring it into force.
Twenty-six delegations took the floor after the Director-General’s intervention, some of them speaking on behalf of groups of members.
Many members commented on a suggested road map for MC14 prepared by the WTO Secretariat and highlighted issues of interest, including WTO reform, new disciplines on fisheries subsidies, progress on agriculture, the e-commerce moratorium, and industrial policy, among others.
